This chapter begins with the discussion of the birth of the Films Division as Nehru’s brainchild and the hope Indian filmmakers placed in the power of the documentary medium to contribute to the ...
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This chapter begins with the discussion of the birth of the Films Division as Nehru’s brainchild and the hope Indian filmmakers placed in the power of the documentary medium to contribute to the project of development on the brink of Independence. It shows that in spite of what appeared to be a denunciation of colonial filmmaking by leaders of post-Independence India, the Films Division adopted production and distribution policies similar to those introduced by the British, including a compulsory exhibition scheme and an assembly-like production pipeline that suppressed the creative input of individual artists. A section on internal tensions brings out evidence from diaries, personal collections and FD record rooms proving that despite these strong continuities, FD was a “melting pot” of ideas about filmmaking and development as early as the 1950s. A separate discussion of FD’s Cartoon Film Unit is included, analyzing the role of animation in government film. The chapter concludes with an extensively researched compilation of views on FD expressed by Indian film critics and political commentators from the late 1940s up until the Emergency. These voices echo the book’s argument about colonial-postcolonial continuity while also hinting at the heterogeneity of voices within FD.Less

The Emergence of the Films Division : Institutional Roots and Tensions

Peter Sutoris

Published in print: 2016-08-15

This chapter begins with the discussion of the birth of the Films Division as Nehru’s brainchild and the hope Indian filmmakers placed in the power of the documentary medium to contribute to the project of development on the brink of Independence. It shows that in spite of what appeared to be a denunciation of colonial filmmaking by leaders of post-Independence India, the Films Division adopted production and distribution policies similar to those introduced by the British, including a compulsory exhibition scheme and an assembly-like production pipeline that suppressed the creative input of individual artists. A section on internal tensions brings out evidence from diaries, personal collections and FD record rooms proving that despite these strong continuities, FD was a “melting pot” of ideas about filmmaking and development as early as the 1950s. A separate discussion of FD’s Cartoon Film Unit is included, analyzing the role of animation in government film. The chapter concludes with an extensively researched compilation of views on FD expressed by Indian film critics and political commentators from the late 1940s up until the Emergency. These voices echo the book’s argument about colonial-postcolonial continuity while also hinting at the heterogeneity of voices within FD.

The introduction instructs readers in the major investments of the book: retrospection and production, repetition and dissemination, film production location politics, urban nostalgia, and film ...
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The introduction instructs readers in the major investments of the book: retrospection and production, repetition and dissemination, film production location politics, urban nostalgia, and film geography.Less

Introduction : Auf WiederSehen, Berlin!

Brigitta B. Wagner

Published in print: 2015-12-01

The introduction instructs readers in the major investments of the book: retrospection and production, repetition and dissemination, film production location politics, urban nostalgia, and film geography.

Berlin Replayed explores the role of film revival and production in the construction of Berlin’s city image and film geographies at several distinct moments in history: the ‘Golden’ Twenties, the ...
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Berlin Replayed explores the role of film revival and production in the construction of Berlin’s city image and film geographies at several distinct moments in history: the ‘Golden’ Twenties, the divided but pre-Wall 1950s, the political turning point of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the start of the new millennium. This book argues for the importance of moving images and cultural policy in fostering collective urban nostalgia in the face of the city’s renewed function as the all-German capital. Understanding films as complex, intertextual archives of place in audiovisual dialogue with changes in the built city, Berlin Replayed approaches successive ‘New’ Berlins from the vantage point of the postwar, postwall city and its film industry—both enmeshed in coming to terms with the structural damage of the Second World War and the legacy of a politically and physically divided cityscape. Combining medium specific approaches with cultural historical and film analytical ones, this study focuses on four key problems raised by the relationship between film geography, profilmic urban space, film revival culture, and the production of cinematic space: 1. remake: how cities remake films and how films remake cities; 2. generation: how films created generational geographical affiliations that ran counter to official demarcations of space; 3. virtuality: how films and new media differ in their representations of Berlin’s layered past and their solutions to lost urban spaces in time; and 4. orientation: how filmic constructions of cinematic urban space instruct spectators in the perception of the changing built city.Less

Berlin Replayed : Cinema and Urban Nostalgia in the Postwall Era

Brigitta B. Wagner

Published in print: 2015-12-01

Berlin Replayed explores the role of film revival and production in the construction of Berlin’s city image and film geographies at several distinct moments in history: the ‘Golden’ Twenties, the divided but pre-Wall 1950s, the political turning point of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the start of the new millennium. This book argues for the importance of moving images and cultural policy in fostering collective urban nostalgia in the face of the city’s renewed function as the all-German capital. Understanding films as complex, intertextual archives of place in audiovisual dialogue with changes in the built city, Berlin Replayed approaches successive ‘New’ Berlins from the vantage point of the postwar, postwall city and its film industry—both enmeshed in coming to terms with the structural damage of the Second World War and the legacy of a politically and physically divided cityscape. Combining medium specific approaches with cultural historical and film analytical ones, this study focuses on four key problems raised by the relationship between film geography, profilmic urban space, film revival culture, and the production of cinematic space: 1. remake: how cities remake films and how films remake cities; 2. generation: how films created generational geographical affiliations that ran counter to official demarcations of space; 3. virtuality: how films and new media differ in their representations of Berlin’s layered past and their solutions to lost urban spaces in time; and 4. orientation: how filmic constructions of cinematic urban space instruct spectators in the perception of the changing built city.

With the switch to streaming video, a whole host or royalty, content, and distribution issues need to be addressed. In addition, there is a plethora of programming designed specifically for the web. ...
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With the switch to streaming video, a whole host or royalty, content, and distribution issues need to be addressed. In addition, there is a plethora of programming designed specifically for the web. Some come and go like mayflies, and die a quick death; others build up a long-term audience, and keep coming back year after year to a cadre of loyal viewers. Web Therapy, for example, has now amassed 46 episodes, with Meryl Streep featured as a recent guest star in a three-episode story arc. Syfy Television (formerly Sci-fi, until the need to copyright the channel’s name forced the somewhat awkward switch to Syfy) has been churning out 10 minute segments of a web serial entitled Riese, with an eye to combining the sections into a two hour TV pilot for the network; and Showtime has oddly created an animated web companion for its hit live action serial killer television show Dexter, entitled Dark Echo, which offers brief (3 to 6 minute) of additional back-story on the series for its numerous devotees.Less

Content Wars

Wheeler Winston Dixon

Published in print: 2013-04-29

With the switch to streaming video, a whole host or royalty, content, and distribution issues need to be addressed. In addition, there is a plethora of programming designed specifically for the web. Some come and go like mayflies, and die a quick death; others build up a long-term audience, and keep coming back year after year to a cadre of loyal viewers. Web Therapy, for example, has now amassed 46 episodes, with Meryl Streep featured as a recent guest star in a three-episode story arc. Syfy Television (formerly Sci-fi, until the need to copyright the channel’s name forced the somewhat awkward switch to Syfy) has been churning out 10 minute segments of a web serial entitled Riese, with an eye to combining the sections into a two hour TV pilot for the network; and Showtime has oddly created an animated web companion for its hit live action serial killer television show Dexter, entitled Dark Echo, which offers brief (3 to 6 minute) of additional back-story on the series for its numerous devotees.

It is an inescapable fact that we will soon experience a complete changeover to digital formatting, eschewing film entirely, many audience members were deeply disturbed by the thought, as if, in ...
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It is an inescapable fact that we will soon experience a complete changeover to digital formatting, eschewing film entirely, many audience members were deeply disturbed by the thought, as if, in losing the platform of film, they were losing some essential essence of the medium. The shift to a digital cinema will not be without controversy. Film comes with one set of values inherently present in the stock itself (a tendency towards warmth in color for some film stocks, or towards cooler hues in others, as well as characteristics of grain, depth, and definition which are unique to each individual film matrix), while the digital video image offers another entirely different set of characteristics, verging on a hyperreal glossiness that seems to shimmer on the screen.Less

The Moving Platform

Wheeler Winston Dixon

Published in print: 2013-04-29

It is an inescapable fact that we will soon experience a complete changeover to digital formatting, eschewing film entirely, many audience members were deeply disturbed by the thought, as if, in losing the platform of film, they were losing some essential essence of the medium. The shift to a digital cinema will not be without controversy. Film comes with one set of values inherently present in the stock itself (a tendency towards warmth in color for some film stocks, or towards cooler hues in others, as well as characteristics of grain, depth, and definition which are unique to each individual film matrix), while the digital video image offers another entirely different set of characteristics, verging on a hyperreal glossiness that seems to shimmer on the screen.